Hope Deferred
by BrokenKestral
Summary: Susan searches for the wardrobe.


**Disclaimer: This is an idea that haunted me till it wrote itself; all the influences that inspired it belong to the greatest Storyteller and to His children, and none of it to me.**

**A/N: So six pages into this story (or it may have been seven) I remembered that in **_**The Last Battle**_** Edmund says that he thought the Professor's old home had been destroyed, and Tumnus affirmed it was. (Which would also explain how the Professor lost all his money and became poor.) So this story is, technically, somewhat AU. The wardrobe might have been destroyed, but trustingHim17 pointed out if it was in a part of the house that was untouched, it could have survived, and the house could have been rebuilt as well. Since I only remembered the destruction six pages in, I decided to overcome my usual canonical qualms, and just leave this as is. It was, I think, worth writing, and I hope it is worth reading. **

"_Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled makes a tree of life."  
__Proverbs 13:12_

OOOOO

Six years. Six years after the crash, a beautiful, pale woman stepped off a train and onto the platform of a quiet country station.

No one was there to meet her. She'd hesitated to take the train - even after six years, the creaks and groans along the rail made her flinch with remembered pain, though not with fear.

But she had another memory of trains, of four children sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids and of a train ride where she'd traded glances with an older brother as the younger sulked, bored, and her youngest sister bravely blinked away tears during the first half hour and looked out the window.

Susan had taken her younger sister's place at the window this time, blinking back her own tears. The countryside was changed, smaller, and with a few more houses and fewer stone ledges.

The ride was disappointing - long and hard. Much the way everything was now.

But this time, too, was different. This time she knew what she was going towards: what she hardly dared hope for, but what she could not keep herself from hoping for. And now, in the middle of the morning, she had arrived at the first step: the platform where she and her siblings had first arrived when going to the Professor's. She could almost see their ghosts, small suitcases in hand, standing bewildered as they looked for someone to fetch them. They had been so, so young.

Susan closed her eyes against the ghosts, shook herself, and held her head up as she descended the platform. She was not worried about getting a ride; the Professor's old home was still a landmark, and all the townspeople would know it. She was sure she'd have no problem with her request to view the house.

But first, to get there. "Excuse me," she said in her clear voice to one of the men sitting in a horse-drawn wagon, talking with the stationmaster. "Would you be able to take me to the old house, mentioned in the histories and guidebooks, where an old Professor Digory Kirk used to live?" The men looked at her, glanced at each other in one of those glances that define who was an outsider and who is known.

"Toff o' some sort, no doubt," the man in the wagon said in a low voice to the stationmaster.

"Aye, here for the old 'ouse," the stationmaster agreed. "How about it?"

"Right, I can take you, miss," the man in the wagon said to Susan. "My name's Jeremy, and if you'll hop up, we'll be off." Despite his words, he was already standing and extending a hand to the younger woman. Susan, after all those years, again walked, spoke, and watched with the queenly grace that had once defined her, and many felt compelled to help her with what courtesy their hearts could hold. She had learned not to compare their rough efforts with the joyous refinement of Narnia, knowing they offered what they could, and the courtesy of the offer was a well-meant gift.

And she might not have to ache for the old courtesy much longer. For both these reasons, she willingly took Jeremy's hand and allowed him to pull her up onto the wooden wagon seat.*

"Thank you," she said quietly, folding her hands on her lap. Through the rough, jolting ride, she maintained her silence, and Jeremy was content to let her, though he stole glances at her occasionally, perhaps seeing more than her upright stance which implied more grace than constraint. Perhaps he saw her pale face lined with a pain that had never ceased, and the heart-piercing look of beauty so sorrowful.

Susan was seeing ghosts again. She heard her young voice telling Edmund not to push, Peter warning Lucy away from the edge, and even heard the rustling of the suitcases rubbing against each other. She had been so worried during that trip that the patches holding in their few items would give way. Such silly fears, she'd had. But fear had too often found her a listener. She was so tired of ghosts. She wanted, she ached, with all the remaining depth of her wounded heart, for real things again.

Closer. Closer. Yes, this was the drive they had walked over and over, recalling things of Narnia, through the rest of that summer. Professor Kirk had come with them (to the bemusement of his staff), and his wisdom had eased their path to being children again, to being _English_ again.

Two of the trees were gone. Susan supposed it improved the view, but she wished, oh how she wished, with all the desire of a child for the familiar, that they had still been in place.

She had the desires of a child again. She'd fought them for so long; but she did not fight them now. Perhaps only children could enter. She _had_ been told she was too old. But if she had the heart of a child again - would it work?

Jeremy glanced at her again as her breath quickened, and perhaps the sorrow breaking through her demeanor spoke, for he cleared his throat as they stopped at the door.

"Will you be needin' a ride back, miss?"

Would she? She did not know. She hoped - oh, Aslan, how she _hoped_ \- she would not. But it was all too likely she would; they had, after all, always come back. "I do not know," she answered, for she always told the truth now.

"Right, miss, I can wait for a bit. Today's me day off. Be kind of ye to send someone out, though, if you're stayin'."

Susan took his hand, gracefully stepped down, released it, and turned back to look at him. "It is kind of you to offer, and I thank you much for it," she said softly. "As soon as I know myself, I will certainly ask them to pass the message on." She turned quickly - kindness could be upsetting, she'd learned, when she was hurting, and this visit, with hope and the past so intertwined, _hurt_. Yes, there were the steps up to the house. Surely, surely, the new owner would have known the worth of the house, and would let her-

There was only one way to know, Susan reminded herself, and raised her hand, knocking firmly.

A maid answered it. Susan's hands trembled; a maid, costumed much as Ivy, Margaret, and Betty had been, answering with that helpful, inquiring look of maids everywhere.

"My name is Susan, and I wish to see the house, if it is convenient for those who live here," she requested, stepping inside after the maid and unpinning her hat. She handed it into the maid's outstretched hand, and thanked her when the maid spoke of getting the housekeeper, Mrs. Richards. The maid left, and Susan pressed her hands to her eyes. She would not cry; she wouldn't. But she _knew_ this room, knew it, and the memories, the dust-and-polish smell, the picture above the fireplace of a stuffy-looking, knighted man, the sunlight falling on the rug - she _knew_ this place.

"Ah, yes, my lady, come to see the house?" a kind, busy, mothering voice inquired, and Susan hastily uncovered her eyes. "Why, my dear, what's wrong?" Susan became aware of cool air hitting streaks on her cheeks, and hastily wiped away the water.

"I was here as a girl," she explained, allowing nostalgia to explain her emotion. The plump housekeeper, hair pulled back in a much messier gray bun than Mrs. Macready would ever have worn, hesitated.

"Forgive me, my dear, but I don't recall children being here? The man before these owners was an old bachelor professor, and you'd be too young for the man before him."

Intelligent, Susan realised, smiling a bit ruefully. She would have to explain a bit more. "I came here with my siblings, three of them, during the war. Professor Kirk took us in-"

"Oh, the war children? Why, my dear, I've heard stories! They say you quite brought the old Professor out of his books and back into the real world with your visit here. Took him to the creek up in the woods and dunked him in accidentally, they told me, him an old man and still recreating battle scenes with your brothers. He came back soaking wet, white hair plastered to his face, and the boys helping him along. Nine days wonder in the village and all that, even as eccentric as I heard he was. Let me see, the younger one was fair-haired and laughing, they said-"

Susan went white, but the woman was too caught up in remembering to notice.

"-so you must be the older one. Susan, was it?"

"Susan Pevensie," Susan supplied, curtsying. Her mask was back in place. It had to be; she had to be strong.

"There, now, that's nice and proper. Come back to see the place again?"

"Yes, please, if it's not too much trouble. And could you please send someone out to tell the man with the wagon - Jeremy - that I'll be viewing the house?"

"Why, no trouble at all! You know most of the things about it, I shouldn't wonder, but we'll go through and you can have a look at the old place just the same. Perhaps you'll tell me some of the stories," she said, opening the door to the hall - one the Pevensies had _not_ run down, as it was too close to the servants' hall and the sharp ears of Mrs. Macready - and Susan smiled, painfully.

Susan did end up telling stories. They were too powerful, too present, not to be told; there was the suit of armor Peter and Edmund _had_ ended up taking apart, and when the Professor had found them at it they'd shown him the various differences between Dwarf-make and English (not that she mentioned the last part to Mrs. Richards), and he'd sat on that chest, there, and asked intelligent questions, and Peter and Edmund had ended up debating the various strengths and weaknesses of both, till a giggling Ivy had found them and reminded them that being half an hour late for supper was "not conducive to the peace of the house, as she says, Professor, begging your pardon." There stood the painting Susan had sought to recapture and even improve, and Peter, not watching where he was going, had run headlong into her and the paint, creating a mess. The four of them cleaned it up before the maids noticed, but there - yes, and tears were again fighting to fall as Susan touched the tiniest bit of blue on the back of the original painting's frame that they'd never been able to clean out. The housekeeper laughed so hard she sat down on a nearby chair, telling her the servants had noticed it and had taken to telling wilder and wilder tales of how it got there, in this strange, adventurous old house. One of the servants, Sarah, had sworn it was all that was left of a secret message that had warned stowaways of approaching enemy soldiers, and the rest of the servants had teased her, telling her painting secret messages in bright blue was a perfect way to make sure they weren't noticed, get off it!

So many stories. So many rooms, and passages, and everywhere, everywhere, Pe-

Everywhere, her siblings. All three of them. Young, and living, and nothing she could touch or call to. Nothing she could be loved by.

But finally, they went in the narrow passage leading to the empty room - the passage was filled with woven tapestries now, though nothing like beautiful, colorful Narnian ones - and then Mrs. Richard's hand was on the knob - the door was opening - more, now, she could see the room - they went in -

And Susan nearly tripped over the rolled-up carpet on the floor. "This room is just storage now, but I thought you might have played in here, a nice empty space it was-"

"Where is the wardrobe?" Susan asked, her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her fingertips and fear choking her throat. "Where is the wardrobe?"

"A wardrobe?" Mrs. Richards asked, face filled with surprise. "That's right - I remember it now. A handsome old thing, filled with fur coats and moth-balls!" Susan smelled them instantly, felt the fur under her fingertips as she handed out coats to her siblings - but _where was it?_ "Let's see - it was gone before my time, but Mrs. Macready told me about it - something the Professor made, I think it was, from a childhood tree. A large one, with a looking-glass in the door?"

"Yes," Susan choked. "Where is it?"

"Why, I don't know, my dear. Gone before my time." Mrs. Richards paused, and looked a little harder at Susan. "It means much to you, doesn't it?"

Susan nodded; how could she explain how much? How could she explain the _need_ that devastated her, when left unmet? Could she ever find it? _Where had it gone?_

"Well, my dear, I've no idea where to send you, but-" Mrs. Richards hesitated.

"But?" Susan asked, almost, almost begging. "Please, my siblings - it meant so much to us, when we were here. It held our whole world inside it." Bigger on the inside; the mystery none of them had known how to understand.

"Someplace safe, after the bombs of London," Mrs. Richards sympathised. Kindness was in her tone again; the kindness that met Susan everywhere and still wasn't enough to touch the hole where she'd lost everything. "Well, I can tell you nothing, but Mrs. Macready was the kind of housekeeper who knew everything, and I don't think she'd mind me giving you her address - she's two stops over, on the train, back towards London. She's not far from the station - she's the sort that will get around and do things, as long as she's still walking, and she'll still be walking as long as she's alive. She's in a big brown apartment lodging, you can see it from the platform, to the left of it. I still go up, sometimes, and she quizzes my memory on all the things in the house and makes sure I've got them right." She gave a short laugh. "Old enough to be your mother, I am, and not much younger than her, but I still feel like a child before a headmistress - that's what we had in my day - when I go to her house. But it pleases her, and it helps me, to make sure someone remembers all of this. She might know where the wardrobe went, my dear." Susan dried her tears. She hadn't been able to stop herself from crying again, after these hopes were dashed.

"Thank you," she whispered. She stopped; she wanted nothing more than to leave right now, find Mrs. Macready - and wouldn't that be odd, Susan realised - but Mrs. Richards had been far too kind for Susan to just leave her now.

But Mrs. Richards was also quite intelligent, and had been watching Susan closely. "You want to go now, dear, don't you?" Susan nodded. "Jeremy won't have left yet; he's sweet on one of the maids, and good for her, I say, for he's a kind man and a good one. He can drive you back, and you'll be in time for the 2:05 train. Come, let's be off."

Susan didn't see much of the house on the way down - listening to the thud of her heart, which seemed to ask _Where? Where? Where?_ and crying, and trying not to cry. Kindness was quite upsetting, and she'd been given much of it here. Mrs. Richards sent a maid for Jeremy, asking him to hook his horse up again (he had stayed), and then the housekeeper settled Susan into a chair in one of the front rooms with a handkerchief and cup of tea while they waited. Susan, in thanks, told her a few more stories till the wagon came rumbling into sight in the window, and Susan set aside her cup of tea and stood. She held out her hands to Mrs. Richards, who had more slowly and lumberingly stood. Mrs. Richards took them in her own, squeezing them gently and firmly.

"Thank you," Susan said, looking into the motherly face a few inches below her own. "Thank you, truly. You are - you have the kindness of the heart of the Lion, and I cannot thank you enough for it."

"Why, that's a strange thing to say, and yet I can't say I've had a nicer compliment," Mrs. Richards responded. "There, now, take care. I'll see you out. Down you go! Goodbye! Goodbye, and take care!" Susan, pulled up into the wagon by Jeremy's hand as he nodded a greeting, sat on the seat and twisted to wave goodbye to Mrs. Richards till she was out of sight.

The trip back to the station was another quiet one, as Susan's nerves had settled somewhat with the tea. Jeremy spoke a little about the maid he'd seen - said she was having a rough day, what with a party coming in two days and all the chairs needing polishing. Susan smiled, listened, nodded, and said little till they were back in town. Jeremy helped her down, and the stationmaster - still at his post - reached down to help her up the stairs to the platform. She turned on it, back to Jeremy.

"It's not my place, but if you would allow me the freedom - we passed a field with lovely flowers on the way here. If you wanted to take some to one of the maids back at that house, I think you might make her day much better."

"Much obliged, miss, that's a grand idea," Jeremy said, tipping his hat. Susan smiled, turned to the stationmaster, bought her ticket gracefully, and retreated a safe distance away so the two men could talk comfortably.

She had bought a ticket for two stops away.

* * *

_Hope deferred makes the heart sick._

She got back on the train. The trip, not as long this time, still whispered to Susan's fears and remembered pain, but the hope she still steadily held drowned it out. She refused to think about what would happen if Mrs. Macready did not know - or would not see her. The idea did not bear thinking about, and that was that.

The stop came, and Susan disembarked. The apartment building, clearly visible from the platform, was indeed not far. Susan left the platform; here she could walk. It was another quiet town - an actual town, buildings in every direction - but mostly small, old, and still with dirt streets. A compromise of city and country.**

Susan took in a breath, lifted her head again, and strode forward. She'd faced her memories; surely she could face a strict housekeeper?

She'd faced strict housekeepers before; granted, she'd usually been on their side, but not always. If facing another meant getting her past life back, then it was something she'd gladly do.

She'd arrived. She walked up to the door, read the names listed by the apartment numbers (this must be a newer building, she realised). Was it her imagination, or were the letters for "Macready" just slightly more orderly and straight?

Apartment 3B. She let herself in, walked the straight, narrow hall, and arrived at the wooden door with a golden 3B hanging on it. She straightened her posture, raised her hand, and gently knocked.

A few even, swift footsteps sounded inside, coming closer; then the door opened. A very old woman, still with her hair pulled back into a precise bun, but more comfortably clad, stood looking at the sad, beautiful woman.

"I know your face," the crisp voice noted, Mrs. Macready's eyes darting up and down Susan as a frown puckered her forehead. "But I do not recall someone of such looks among my acquaintance."

Susan swallowed. Mrs. Richards had been quite right. "You knew me when I was younger," she explained. "I'm-"

"Susan Pevensie, one of the four war orphans." Susan almost closed her eyes; that word, that haunting word - there had to be a word for losing both parents, because that kind of grief could not go unexpressed. She hadn't been an orphan then, but she was now. "Second oldest, and most sensible, if I remember correctly, which I'm sure I do. Well, come in then. The hallway is no place for a young lady to remain." Susan entered the small home, noting the decorations - sparse, plain, generally white, but in good taste - and the two chairs in the living area.

"Tea?" Mrs. Macready asked shortly, and Susan shook her head, sitting down when Mrs. Macready motioned.

"I'm here to ask a question, if you would be so kind," Susan started. She folded her hands in her lap again - the better to hide their trembling - "I visited the old mansion today, and Mrs. Richards was kind enough to show me around." Mrs. Macready said nothing, still regarding Susan with those uncomfortably sharp eyes. "We went up to that room that had once been empty, but for a very large wardrobe, and the wardrobe was missing. I know it is a most unusual question, but please - do you remember where the wardrobe went?" _Do you? Do you? Do you?_ thudded Susan's heart.

Mrs. Macready folded her own hands in her lap. "I remember that wardrobe. All four of you - five of you, after you spent some time with the Professor - had the oddest habit of visiting it. When your sister looked like she felt like crying, she'd fold herself up into a corner of it. Since she, quite sensibly, left the door open and did not shut herself in, I never interfered." Susan's throat caught again; she hadn't known that about Lucy, but it was such a _Lucy_ thing to do. "Your brothers went there, sometimes, just to touch it. And the Professor went knocking on the back of it once, as if testing to see if it was hollow." Her tone implied "such a silly man, but I am much too well-bred to say so." She kept going. "The wardrobe was a treasure to him, but it hadn't first belonged to the house, and the new owners thought it too big; a waste of space." Too big - an entire country inside it, Susan thought, and wondered what the new owners would have done if they'd known. "They sold it, along with a great deal of other furniture to Mssers. Paddington and Henry, on Grace Church Street in London. They should have the wardrobe, or at least a record of its sale." Susan's sigh was all of relief. Mrs. Macready had remembered; Susan had a direction to follow. "You never went near it, I noticed," and though it was said as a statement, Susan could hear the well-bred question.

"I did not care to, then," Susan admitted. "I was trying to - to see the world for what it was, outside the wardrobe." She rose, smoothing her dress. "I cannot thank you enough, Mrs. Macready, for remembering this, and allowing me my questions," she said quietly. Mrs. Macready nodded, and tilted her head towards the door, a clear goodbye, and Susan went.

"I was sorry to hear of his train accident." Susan paused, turning just before she reached the door. Mrs. Macready hadn't risen, but she wasn't looking at Susan now; she was looking down, remembering.

"I beg your pardon?" Susan asked. Surely she couldn't mean-

Mrs. Macready raised her head, and Susan, with all the insight her own sorrow had given, saw the pain felt, repressed, and yet still so heart-aching clear in that strict face. "The Professor was, for all his eccentricities, one of the best and most generous men I have known in a very long life, Miss Pevensie. He was rarely on time for dinner, but he was always in the right place for a hurting soul. There was not a thing he owned he would not give away, if a person needed it - and he had the wisdom to see the true needs, and not be taken in by false ones." Her hands clenched on her lap, white and wrinkled and old. "I meant to visit him, sometime - only I never found the time, and one day the morning newspaper informed me there was no more time." She paused. "I read your siblings' names there too, and two names above them that were likely your parents."

"And my cousin," Susan whispered, "and my friend, and the Professor's friend. Everyone - everyone who ever cared about Nar- about the wardrobe."

"Polly Plummer. Her name was Polly Plummer," Mrs. Macready corrected. Her eyes were on Susan again. "I do hope you find the wardrobe, Susan. And whatever else you are looking for in it now."

Susan, again nearly blind with tears, whispered a thank you, and slipped out.

* * *

_Hope deferred makes the heart sick._

Susan wanted, as badly as she had wanted to find the wardrobe at the Professor's old house, to go to Grace Church Street that very evening, but she knew it would be foolish. It would be closed by the time the train got in, and if she hoped to buy the wardrobe - which she did - she would need more money than she had with her.

So she went home, set aside her hat, changed her dress, and tried to sleep.

She lay, eyes open in the dark, watching memories instead. She could remember it, the wood under her fingers, the unexpectedness of snow underfoot, the way Lucy's voice had truly lightened since they'd first feared she'd gone mad, the air - there was nothing like the air of Narnia.

_Narnia. Aslan, You said I was too old to go back - but can't You see, I have nothing left now? Please, please, do not tell me no, not to this. Let me have the one desire I have left. I will be a woman living as no one important in Narnia, I will be silent on the past, I will do anything You require - but please give me this._

Morning was hours away, but hours eventually pass. Susan dressed, checked her directions, and took a cab to the store. Perhaps "store" was misnamed; it was rather a very large building full of mismatched furniture, all being sold for various prices. The clerk was busy when Susan entered - busy talking to a very pretty, lively girl about mirrors, and Susan turned away, seeing an echo of the person she had been, those six long years ago.

But that wasn't her now. She was different, with the hopes and memories of a child, the purse of an adult, and the quest of a queen. She walked round, past a bed, a horrid scarlet dresser, a rug draped over a pole so it could be displayed. Round and round she went, in larger circles, past item after item of furniture, till finally, there on the back wall, she saw it.

She knew it as she had known the smell and sunlight in the front room of the Professor's house (always the Professor's house, to her). Older, and Susan smiled through tears as she ran her fingers down the side, over a new dent that had not been there before. She opened it; the fur coats were gone, but the smell of moth-balls was still faintly present. She glanced at the price tag; it was well within her means. She would buy it; it would be hers.

But not yet. Not quite yet; she wasn't ready to leave it yet. She opened both doors, opened them wide, and cried again at the sight of the wood. She stepped inside; the back was in shadow. Further, further, further in, hand outstretched - and she touched the back. The door was not open yet.

It didn't matter. It would be. It had to be. Susan wiped her eyes and her face (she had done that much, recently), walked out of this _home_, went up to the front desk, calmly explained her demand, arranged for both purchase and delivery, and went home to wait, resisting the urge to go back and view it one more time before she left.

It was coming to her. She would wait.

She waited a few hours, unable to pray anything besides _Aslan. Aslan. Aslan. Aslan. Please. Aslan._

It arrived. Susan had moved in to a new flat six years ago and had not bought much furniture since, and the wardrobe had plenty of space. The movers set it down, she paid them, and they left, leaving her standing in front of the wardrobe. She reached out, her hands trembling. She tried to clench them, still them, take deep breaths to calm herself, but it did not work. Her hope stood in front of her, and now she would know-

Now she would know. She reached suddenly, before she could lose her courage, or listen to fears, and swept the doors open, almost running inside, arms outstretched.

Two steps, three, four-

She bruised her hands on the back of the wardrobe. She backed up, shut the doors, opened them again, more slowly this time. One step, two steps, three, four - the back of the wardrobe against her fingertips. She went out, shut the doors, tried it again.

Nothing. There was no Narnia.

By the time she had tried seven times, she was crying. By the twelfth, she was sobbing, and she sank down in front of the doors, buried her head in her knees, and wept like a child.

She tried again, that night after supper. Only three tries then, just to be sure.

It was three tries the next morning, but two the next afternoon.

Eventually it was one, always one - but for those three days, she could not stop trying. And praying, _please, Aslan, please_. The third day she heard an answer as she rested her head on the wardrobe's closed door, but the answer was a deep, golden sigh, breath stirring her hair. _Oh, child._

_Aslan?_

_Open the doors, child. But do not enter._ Susan yanked on the doors, flinging them aside - and took a shuddering step back.

It was black. Utterly, completely black, the black of a nothingness so absolute it was nightmarish; the emptiness of the White Witch's eyes, of Miraz's greed, of the darkest night without sun or stars.

_What is this?_ Susan asked in horror.

_It is your Narnia, child. That Narnia ended._

_No._ Susan stared into the darkness, reeling. _No, no, no, no, nonononono. Please!_

His breath stirred her hair again, that wild, strong smell that was better than Narnia, and the doors swung closed.

She was in England, empty England, difficult England, and Narnia - Narnia was forever gone. Susan crumpled to the floor. She had been given what she wanted, and it made her heart sick._ It's gone. Everything's gone._

_I am not._ Again that smell, that gentle breath. _I am not._

_I am enough._

Susan could not stop crying. _You're not __here__. I cannot touch You, cannot live with You; You're as much of a ghost as they are!_

_Am I?_

Susan remembered the past six years, the time she'd started seeking Him again - the way she'd found Him.*** The way He'd found her. He was not a ghost, and she knew it.

_I am the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End, and nothing is lost that is mine.****_

Nothing. Oh, how she needed that. Nothing was _lost_—not even Narnia?—even-

Even if it was lost to her.

He was not lost to her.

But His presence was not hers to command either, and she craved it, needed it, wanted it there daily. And it wasn't always there; she couldn't always feel it.

He didn't answer that.

Susan cried herself out on the floor, crying for all she could not have, for a Narnia that no longer existed. When she had wept herself empty, she stayed there still she started to shiver from the cold. Finally, she got up, slowly, and made her way to the kitchen with weary steps, without a backwards glance at the wardrobe. That door would stay forever shut. She made herself tea and sat.

She didn't want to think, but in the quiet she had no choice. He wasn't a tame Lion. She had known that as long as she had known Him. She had needed Him before, even in - that other place (was Narnia a word she could not use now, just like her siblings' names? A name that only meant something lost?), and He had not come right when she had cried. The night they discovered Cair Paravel was in ruins, they realised how long they had been gone. Later, alone, she had cried for Him and He had not come. She had refused to believe He'd come to Lucy afterwards. The night He'd died, she had not known to call to Him then, but her heart had been - and He had made her wait, her and Lucy both. The night they fled from Tashbaan, she had begged Him to help them, to make sure no others paid for her folly, and He had not come.

But they had escaped. Susan set down her tea and rested her head on her hands. Each time, He had come - in His timing. He had corrected their wandering way with the D.L.F., risen the next morning, secured their flight from Tashbaan, even saved Archenland by their hands. He was always there; she just had not always seen and heard Him.

_Aslan?_ she called Him by the name she knew better, even after six years. Nothing. But Lucy would have said to have faith He was listening. _I don't think I can do this alone anymore._ She waited. _I know I'm not alone, in reality, but,_ she swallowed, _that doesn't change that I feel alone. And now Narnia - Narnia is gone. I have no other hope to cling to._

She waited. There was no answer; but she thought He might be waiting too. _There's that thing You wrote in this world - our hope will not put us to shame. That means it's certain. _Breathe in, calming the sounds. _But it was __Narnia__, it was my siblings, it was everything good You gave me to love, and now it's gone. Why would You take it all and leave me? Why would You want me to keep going when there is nothing left?_ Only there was something left, a thing that came and went, that somehow stayed even when she didn't feel it. _You're not gone._ She closed her eyes. _You're not gone._ _You're enough? You said You were. _She hoped He meant enough for the depth of the brokenness within her, for someone so utterly destroyed.

But she had no land to return to now, nothing left but grey London and a life she didn't want. The hopelessness…

Was something she had seen recently. Susan could see it again, the pain breaking through the reserve in Mrs. Macready's stern, old face. She would have made a good Centaur, Susan suddenly realised, and choked on a laugh. Laying that thought aside, though the humor brought her strength, she thought back to that moment. Mrs. Macready's pain would become another of her ghosts, Susan could feel it, if nothing were done to lift it. Another wound, a reinforcing of her own pain. Susan huddled closer to the table, to her arms. Mrs. Macready? She was not someone who would readily accept any help. And Susan was not sure, as thoroughly as she had been broken, that she had enough in her to help anyone.

One thing at a time, Susan thought. It had been how she had gotten hard things done _there_ too. She'd start tomorrow; she'd send a letter, now that she had the address. And maybe to Aunt Alberta, too, who would be even more prickly. It would - it would be something to do, and that, at least, would take some of the unwelcome time.

And it would be someone to grieve with, eventually. Someone else who remembered a summer where everything changed.

Maybe even someone to tell the stories of it to. And those - those always made Aslan and her siblings almost live for a moment.

_But it's still so hard_, she whispered to the Lion. _Everything is so hard._

_So was the Stone Table. So was the cross. _It was the Lion's voice; He had been listening. _Courage, dear and broken heart. I do not lose even one of My own, no matter how hard the way._

Tomorrow - tomorrow Susan would write her letters. Today was to grieve everything she had lost.

One more reminder in the Lion's voice sounded in her ears, her heart - _I have not lost anything. Not Narnia, not your siblings, and not a single tear you have cried. The way is hard, but nothing on it is lost._

_Take up your cross and follow me. _

* * *

"_...but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life."_

Susan's story did not end there.

It didn't get easier, not for years. Long, long years.

But she learned to love when things were hard, and that was enough reason to keep going.

Till she lost Mrs. Macready too, and she fell again. But He was there, and she knew Him better. She knew how much she needed Him, and she knew His Word better. There she found her hope, and there she stayed her hope, till at last hope was fulfilled. Her last beginning came, finally, when she had learned to stand fast in all circumstances, and there she found the true England, the true Narnia, and everything she had lost, and she was very welcome there. But that is a story I have not been told yet; I only know it happened.

OOOOO

*I will admit, as an American, I am guessing both at dialect and what an English wagon of the time would look like; I'm much more familiar with American models.  
**I am absolutely making this up, by the way, as Americans don't often travel by train unless they're in a _REALLY_ big city, and in Japan there wasn't room to have a country town anywhere in the three or four prefectures around Tokyo. Did I mention I'm really not good with geography in countries I haven't been in?  
***I have written that out in _Remaking the Queen_, if you're interested.  
****Suggested by SouthwestExpat, who helped me also with the ending.

**A/N: I am not happy with the ending (it seems cut far too short), but I have not learned this lesson well enough to write a better one. I'm sorry.**


End file.
